The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1887-03-17
A BABEL OF FILTH.
Description Of . Visit to tho Hebrew Qunr.
ter of the City of Amsterdam.


There is part of this great city de-
voted, or rather given up entirely, to
the Hebrew race. 1t is called the
Joodenhoek. Those who have travelled
in Italy, visited the slums of Paris,
London or New York. have something
yet to see to prove that mans imagina-
ton is deficient. The Israelites, of
whom $1,000 live in this city, have
among them some who, for wealth, in
telligence, and industrial energy, arc
the peers of most men, and yet, visit
ing the Jewish quarter, traveller will
find himself in a labyrinth of dark,
narrow, muddy alleys. fanked by old
houses that seem to be tumbling down.
Damp, ragged sheets, tattered trousers,
patched petticoats fiutter and swing to
and fro on ropes stretched from window
to window, on the window-sills,
or dangling from nails driven
into the doors. In the door
ways, on the broken steps, amid
tumbling-down ratings old goods are
spread for sale. Shattered ruins of
furniture, fragments of firearms, de-
votional objects, scraps of uniforms,
bits of musical instruments, broken
toys, old iron, dilapidated crockery,
fringes, rags, things for which it is i'm
possible to find words to describe, that
have been spoiled by rain, by worm,
by fire, by rust, by carlessness, by ILL
ness, poverty, or death; things that
servants sweep into the dust-hole; that
the rag-picker disdains to pick up; that
the beggar treads under foot; that ami
mails scorn to notice; every thing that
takes up room; that tcontaminates; that
exhales fetid odor; that soils; that
disgusts the least sensitive being, may
be found there in heaps and layers,
destined to become the object of mys-
terious bargains. In the midst of this
cemetery of inanimate objects, of this
babel of filth, lives a populace of hag-
gard-looking, begging, grasping men
and women, by the side of which the
Albaicin gypsies of Grenada would ap-
pear a cleanly and sweet-smelling
race.
Here, as in all countries, they have
borrowed the color of their hair and
skin from the people they live among.
But they have preserved their hooked
noses. sharp chins, curly hair-all the
| features, in short, characteristic of the
Semitic race. The dictionary does not
contain words wherewith to give de-
scription of these people. Shaggy
heads of hair never touched by comb;
eyes that cause one to shudder, bodies
as thin as an unfeshed corpse; so ugly
as to arouse feeling of compassion;
so old that they preserve scarcely any re-
semblance of human shape; wrapped in
every sort of clothing, of which it is inn
possible to define either the cut OF color
or to tell the sex of the wear
er. Whatever they may be doing
| they do it on the sidewalk. Women
frying fish upon small ovens, girls put
| ting children to sleep; men turning
over old rubbish; half-naked boys roll
| ing about the pavement strewn with
rotten vegetables and refuse of fish,
| scenes that can not be described, and
that compel the tourist, when he comes
forth on the border of broad canal,
in clean open space, to believe that
his experience has only been dream,
and yet situated as this portion of He.
brews are in Amsterdam, with all the
poverty, misery and filth surrounding
them, the records of the criminal courts
testify that the laws of the land in
which they live are observed by them
and that but one Jew is found in the
cellular prison of Amsterdam among
240 inmates.-Amsterdam Cor. Chi
cago Tribune.